Wednesday, April 8, 2009

On Uncertain Ground

Yesterday was a very busy day, and gave a new and exciting cast to the trip.

In the morning I had a long conversation at SFEI -- the San Francisco Estuary Institute -- about their historical ecology projects. In brief, they have prepared accounts of landscapes in the Bay Area and the change that has taken place over time using accounts and photographs from the earliest Europeans to modern times. This work can then be used by governmental or conservation groups to identify what landscapes are able to be restored, and how to prioritize conservation and restoration efforts.

It was interesting to hear that government agencies like Santa Clara Valley Water District have been the chief funders for these projects, reflecting a change in the attitude toward the environment of both organizations and their constituencies. Many utilities' efforts now work to incorporate environmentally friendly practice and to make use of the historical ecology provided by SFEI.

Following this meeting, I met with Ralph Kanz of Alameda Creek Alliance at Arrowhead Marsh in the backyard of SFEI. Ralph showed me around the marsh, pointing out three endangered clapper rails among other birds, and offering a flurry of information about California land, history, and his experience with conservation in the last few decades. There was an honesty and an urgency in Ralph's discussion of the environment that helped remind me of the significance of efforts to improve land conservation and protection. The area is home to clapper rails, but also to his family for the last 150 years.

After several organizational and logistical phone calls, my next stop was the East Bay Regional Parks District office. After introducing myself there, I was offered nothing but kindness and generosity from the folks working there. A special thanks to Tiffany Margulici, Richard Winn, and Karen McClendon, whose interest and help yesterday was crucial for the next week of the walk. Thanks again!

I walked from the EBRPD office through the Oakland Zoo, and up a dramatically steep slope overlooking a wooded canyon, the fringe of Oakland's Knowland Park. Bordered on either side by suburban development, the rectilinear park stretched east for several miles along a creek through hills and canyons, oaks and grasses, rain and sunshine. Around 4 pm I finally had lunch, not having had time to eat since breakfast around 9, and scarfed a whole avocado as I walked through a terrific thunderstorm. Stormy skies hovered over the bay, offering hazy vistas of downtown Oakland, San Francisco, and the Santa Cruz Mountains. Balance on the dirt fire roads was tricky in the rain, but I managed to stay on my feet.

At the east end of the park, I cut south through a thin vegetated terrace between two private properties. Perhaps the most frightening part of the day, as I had to crawl, climb, and maneuver through dense tangles of poison oak. After trotting down a driveway (apologies to the owner, whoever you are...) I found myself on Golf Links Road, near the entrance to Anthony Chabot Regional Park. I let the poison oak know aloud what I thought about it, and what I thought about myself for not having avoided it. You can imagine how that conversation went.

Entering Anthony Chabot, the park seemed a world away from the scruffier parts of Oakland I had come from earlier in the day. Abundant trees and grasses, steep ridges overlooking river valleys with long views north and south, all glimmering from the fresh rainfall. I entered at the Woolridge parking lot and made my way across a ridge then down an incredibly steep, muddy trail to grass valley creek and the columbine trail below. I was glad to have learned to snowboard a few weeks ago, as I was sliding down the trail as much as walking. I had a pretty spectacular tumble around one corner, the kind you wish you could witness.

The bottom of the valley was a paradisiacal moist forest of tangled oaks, ferns, and salamanders, causing me to exult and exalt verbally. I followed the trail around the steep ravines above Lake Chabot, finally reaching the family campground at the top of an incline.

With tired feet, I unpacked at the campground, made a small fire of Eucalyptus leaves, bark, and branches, and relaxed into dinner. I got a little too comfortable by bedtime, and assumed that the bad weather was behind. Around 11pm a downpour began again, and I had to scramble barefoot to keep my belongings dry and shove them all, with me diving after, into my small one-man tent. As it turns out, the tent, an old model of my dad's, is not quite as waterproof as it once was, making for a cold night and a morning nearly floating in the puddle on the tent floor beneath me.

The title of this post describes both the slippery, wet, and steep terrain of the day, the unusual ecology of Chabot (dominated by Eucalyptus trees planted in the early 20th century by the water district), and the variety of perspectives I got throughout the day. Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Natureis a book of environmental essays from a diverse group of authors. Hearing from SFEI, Ralph Kanz of ACA, and EBRPD today made for an abbreviated version of this kind of variety, but touched on the difficulty and complexity of resolving environmental issues when so many interests and goals are at stake. With about 60 seconds left of internet at the library, I'll conclude this somewhat rushed post, and hope to expound a bit more on some of what I learned from the day later.

Have a great trip Alex. I have created a link to the blog for your trip on the site we made for our 2006 Trans-California Ramble. Hope you can put a link on your site. Then people can compare our trips and see how much fun it is. I really hope that your walk gets more people interested in walking across California. When I was looking for your web site I found another called Walking Across California. They are walking from the Pacific at Wadell Creek to the snow near Folsom.

Walking Across California Reconsidering John Muir's Path

In 1868, when John Muir first arrived in San Francisco, he almost immediately crossed the Bay to Oakland and began walking to Yosemite. On April 6, Alex McInturff is setting off to retrace Muir's path across California. Alex is a master's student in the Earth Systems Program in the School of Earth Sciences at Stanford University. He has been researching the history of and current state of conservation in California in conjunction with the Bill Lane Center for the American West and our collaborator iMapData. Alex envisions his own walk as a way to examine the history, current state, and future prospects of a wide range of conservation efforts on public and private lands, across a telling transect of California, from urban areas, through suburbs and parks, across the large parks and ranches of the Coast Range, the irrigated industrial agriculture of the Central Valley, Kesterson Wildlife Refuge, up the Merced River, across the Don Pedro Reservoir and Lake McClure, through historical mining towns, and national forests to Yosemite National Park. You can follow his journey here.

The Map

Contacts

To chat electronically with Alex about his walk, leave a comment here on his blog. If you would like to meet with Alex in person along the way or have him speak to a group, please e-mail him. Journalists please contact Jon Christensen at the Bill Lane Center for the American West at Stanford University.